By David Rolland
Residents of the Tomales Bay area from 1 to 4:30 p.m. Saturday at the Red Barn will have a chance to help decide the longterm future of Point Reyes Station.
That's when the business of updating the Point Reyes Station Community Plan begins.
County planners and supervisors use community plans as guides when ruling on village issues. Since March, a group of community activists has been learning the process of updating the 20-year-old document with help from county planners.
Saturday's meeting "is a workshop," noted committee member Laura Natkins of Inverness Park. "It's not a meeting where [people] are going to be talked at."
The workshop will give people a chance to "think about the town and what's important to them, what kinds of things they'd like to see changed and the things they'd like to see stay the same."
Natkins, whose young family moved to West Marin a year and a half ago, said she "initially felt funny" being a newcomer involved in the planning process. She worried what longtime residents would think. "But I realized that it's my kids' future," she said. "This is where they're growing up. This is home."
To help participants get the update started, the committee has developed a list of issues to discuss.
The list includes specific issues like sewage and garbage disposal, swimming pools, town parks, traffic, bicycle paths, low-cost housing, trees, public toilets, the Grandi Building, and noise control.
Also up for discussion will be larger topics such as how to guide tourism, whether to control the number of bed-and-breakfast inns, problems with current zoning, and how to regulate the use of lighting, parking spaces, and signs by downtown businesses.
Inverness contractor Marshall Livingston, who has just rebuilt Point Reyes Station's old livery stable, said this week that the decisions made will affect everyone in one way or another. "It gives people an opportunity to have an affect on the future here," he said.
The update process will include many months of workshops, focus groups, and resident surveys before it is submitted to county supervisors for approval, which may not happen until fall of 1997.
Child care will be offered during Saturday's meeting, and refreshments will be served.
The Point Reyes Station Community Plan was first written and adopted by county supervisors in 1976. It was updated in 1986. The plan was developed with the assumption that Point Reyes Station is the recognized commercial hub of West Marin.